The invention relates to an object for the conveying or storing media, particularly gaseous and liquid media, like oil and gas, which is provided with a hydraulically bound weighting layer or mass with at least one aggregate with a high specific gravity.
Such objects, like pipes for the transmission of media or containers for the storage of media, particularly gaseous and liquid media, which are provided with a weighting shell are known per se. This type of pipe is for example used when conveying oil and gas under water, whereby the used pipes should have a sufficiently high specific gravity to prevent floating or rising to an undesired height.
Particularly when such pipes are installed in the open sea with active shipping traffic, it is advisable to keep these pipes at the greatest possible depth, so as to avoid the risk of damage to pipe lines constructed from them. Also containers used at sea are preferably weighted to permit them being more easily fixed. This means that heavy aggregates should be incorporated into the weighting layer or mass.
A weighting sleeve so far used consists of a mixture of concrete as a hydraulic binding agent and aggregates in the shape of gravel and/or iron ore particles. It is, however, not advisable to use iron ore, since then substances which are valuable in itself are exclusively used for weighting purposes.
On the other hand when gravel is used as aggregate particles, one is compelled to sift out the fine particles and to use exclusively the coarse ones since the finer particles require rather much hydraulic binding agent in order to obtain a coherent mass and small particles make too small a contribution to the desired weightening.
The invention in one aspect aims to provide an article, particularly a pipe or container of the aforementioned type which does not suffer from this disadvantage and which carries a weighting layer or mass of a particularly high specific weight, while moreover it suffices to use a smaller quantity of concrete as a hydraulic binder than with the known weighting sleeves. It is even possible to use no concrete at all, but this requires either a long time to harden the material or an increased temperature.
This object is achieved in that the weighting layer or mass consists of a slag aggregate from metal melting furnaces preferably with hydraulic binding.
Preferably a steel slag aggregate with a hydraulic binding is used.
On account of the hydraulic binding effect of the slag aggregate from a metal melting furnace, which has a particularly high specific gravity, it is possible to obtain a very firm weighting layer or mass with a particularly small quantity of binder, or even with no binding agent at all, this mass having a very high weight, as a much larger quantity of aggregate particles can be incorporated thereinto than in the known shells. A thinner layer with the same weight can therefore be applied to an object, an operation which is desirable in practice.
The invention in another aspect relates to a method for applying a weighting layer or mass to an object, particularly a covering layer for the conveying media, or a container for storing fluids, particularly gaseous or liquid fluids, while the object is provided with a high specific weight containing a hydraulic binding mixture, characterised in that the binding mixture contains a slag aggregate with a hydraulic binding from metal melting furnaces being preferably a steel slag aggregate.